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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Carl

Didn't know about that, will have to find some time to read it, though from what mike G put below it sounds like maybe the scenario was somewhat different to how it was described to me in the past discussion.

I'll take your word on the throwing a track. As far as the effects of explosive weapons, i'm not basing that on the water content, (though i'm sure thats part of why it's so), but rather on a number of times mythbusters did tests involving human analogues and shrapnel or shrapnel like objects. They've shown that the human body has a remarkable ability to absorb shrapnel and shrapnel like objects. Often without bone analog present to make it worse. I don't expect a 155 to behave like the hand grenade in their jumping on a grenade test, but i do expect a correlation in that the maximum number of bodies it can go through is going to be severely limited even accounting for the pulping effect vs zombies within a few meters of the initial impact point producing extra shrapnel. It's a shame they aren't still going as it would be a great myth for them to test IMO.

As for the drying, again we come back to zombie types, some don't decay and seem to get moister.

I'll take your word on that, but i don't think that invalidates the scenario as i understood it, namely a military dealing with mass outbreaks due to improper early recognition of what was going on, severely overstretched, and with friendly fire concerns on civilians coupled with i'd imagine severe political interference from on high. I don;t think the scenario is unreasonable given human nature, and i suspect that would give most militaries a hard time, (somwhere like switzerland would probably fare quite well, they make the US seem positively gun free due to how their military reserves system works), although they might have issues with soldiers being trained to go for center mass leading to a lot of ineffective small arms fire as everyone's training kicks in.

Just a few issues.

I realize that plenty of wounds that will take out a human won't take out a zombie, but the author gives that too much credit, claiming most of the artillery and gunship attacks are ineffective.

First, the effectiveness of artillery is greatly understated. Many, many shells are designed to be airbursting, which would invalidate all the muffling effects of the mob of zombies and result in lots and lots of head wounds from fragments. We also have munitions intended to start fires and Area Denial rounds which drop landmines, which could be deployed in front of the horde. These are bounding fragmentation mines which bounce up before exploding, so, again, plenty of head wounds. Even static mines would blow off legs, which would slow then further, and if the front zombie in a mindless horde is just pulling itself forward with its arms, it will probably be trampled to paste by the ones behind it. And the barrage could be started when the zombies were miles and miles away, to give plenty of time to adjust the defense if things weren't working right.

Airstrikes of napalm on a crowd of zombies would incinerate loads and loads of them, and the fires it would start would continue to serve as damage or area denial, depending on if they are smart enough to avoid fires.

Yes, they'd live longer on fire than a human, but only so long. Not sure how hot it has to be to cook a brain, but that should be as good as shooting one, and they won't have eyes for ears or noses after a minute on fire, so even if they keep walking, they'll be crippled.

Lastly, the idea of small arms fire reverting to Center of Mass, which we can all agree would be ineffective against a zombie.

You use Center of Mass because it's the best chance to hit what is usually a target that is moving fast and taking advantage of cover. If the enemy is moving slowly toward you, you have plenty of time to take careful aim. The current M16/M4 variants are very accurate and almost everybody has some kind of advanced optics today, so head shots at a slow moving guy at fifty or so yards is really not asking a lot.

Plus, much of the inaccuracy in combat is from nerves because you are usually being shot back at. If you aren't worried by the bullets snapping past your head, it will be much easier to take a moment to get a good sight picture. And a zombie at 50 or 100 or even 20 meters isn't a threat like the average enemy soldier is, so you can take a nice steady firing position and not sweat needing to hug the cover, make a nice slow rifle range trigger pull, and wait until the target is close enough to hit the head.

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.

Last edited by Mike_G; 2018-02-16 at 09:54 AM.

Out of wine comes truth, out of truth the vision clears, and with vision soon appears a grand design. From the grand design we can understand the world. And when you understand the world, you need a lot more wine.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

any reason both those lances were from way before the invention of the stirup? Like, did 2 handed lances stop being efficient?

Stirrups have nothing whatsoever to do with making couched charges from horseback. They are for making stable archery platforms, and giving better side-to-side stability in a standing melee.

Originally Posted by Knaight

There were spears that saw two handed use other than pikes though - any number of hewing spears, records of normal spear techniques for two handed use (especially in Chinese and viking documents), so on and so forth.

All the longer Chinese weapons I'm aware of are polearms, rather than spears. Glaive-bladed weapons and such.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Mike_G

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.

The way Hollywood depicts soldiers and militaries about 98% of the time is so ignorant that it borders on immoral.

Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-02-16 at 10:03 AM.

It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy

The way Hollywood depicts soldiers and militaries about 98% of the time is so ignorant that it borders on immoral.

You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Haighus

Equipment too. Useless tissue paper armour cut through by swords and daggers is a personal bugbear.

Ugh, yeah... quality plate armor being stabbed through like it's paperboard, sword "techniques" that look like flailing about with a length of iron pipe, archers being the smallest weakest soldiers, etc.

Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre

You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

Certainly.

See also forensics, police, investigations, computers and "hacking", explosions and collisions, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if you could make a name in movies by adhering to a standard of "show it like it really is"... explosions that act like real explosions, professional soldiers and SWAT who act like the thing, etc.

Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-02-16 at 10:59 AM.

It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy

Certainly.

See also forensics, police, investigations, computers and "hacking", explosions and collisions, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if you could make a name in movies by adhering to a standard of "show it like it really is"... explosions that act like real explosions, professional soldiers and SWAT who act like the thing, etc.

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.

I don't really mind, until they (or other people using movies as fact) start trying to meddle in the real world. Hint--just because you played one on TV doesn't make you a [doctor/lawyer/soldier/spy/scientist/etc].

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.

I don't really mind, until they (or other people using movies as fact) start trying to meddle in the real world. Hint--just because you played one on TV doesn't make you a [doctor/lawyer/soldier/spy/scientist/etc].

On the other hand, combat with melee weapons is often much slower than the actual thing. Especially in a battlefield context in medieval/ancient settings. Although street fights often have the protagonist moving round the opponents like they are standing still...

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Haighus

On the other hand, combat with melee weapons is often much slower than the actual thing. Especially in a battlefield context in medieval/ancient settings. Although street fights often have the protagonist moving round the opponents like they are standing still...

True enough, although I'd say that's due to some of the same limitations. If it's over in the blink of an eye (one or two moves), people will miss it and wonder what happened. People expect it to take a while (because they don't really know), so unless it does it doesn't have the right dramatic weight.

A "realistic" movie would be hard to watch, and it runs the uncanny valley risk pretty heavily. I can't watch things that claim to be "realistic" about science--because they either fail at being a good movie or they fail at being good science. Things that don't make that claim are fine, though.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre

You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

But at least a scientist is often the one who kicks the bad guys into the monster's mouth after they effortlessly shoot all the soldiers.

So the rule might be that every movie character has to be very bad at their own job, but can be reasonably competent in a semi-magical "that wouldn't work in real life" kind of way at someone else's job.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.

Nonesense. I've been hearing this kind of argument for decades. This is the reality.

Most films in the 60's or 70's were as bad as today, with different kinds of emphasis. But slight improvements in realism often paid dividends. Kirusawa Samurai films, Clint Eastwood / Sergeo Leoni Spaghetti Westerns were more realistic than the earlier John Wayne type.

John Wick was, if not realistic by any stretch, certainly making use of real fighting techniques. The whole thing was the creation of a fight coordinator.

Saving Private Ryan was a success based largely on the high level of realism of the first 5 minutes of the film.

Real medieval fencing for example is easily adaptable to modern fast cut editing. In fact it is if anything, too fast for most people to follow and you have to slow it down.

The truth is, most people have been conditioned to actually prefer mediocrity, some people are downright militant about it. It gives them something familiar which they feel they own.

But realistic fighting 'feels' right even to neophytes who know nothing about it. That's why you are seeing more jujitsu and less Peking Opera Wushu in fight scenes even in lame action movies.

There is a market for more realistic combat but few studio's would bother, because they are aiming low for the niche that they think will pay off. More often than not these days they guess wrong and fail. Hollywood has been losing a lot of money.

As for Zombies and artillery tubes, it's a ridiculous argument to say we don't have enough artillery tubes. The US has a huge military (especially if you include National Guard and Reserve forces) and artillery is a key component of every combat unit. Every base on that map of the US I posted upthread has substantial artillery or mortar ordinance. Mortars in particular, are extremely ubiquitous. Down to the company level - my HQ company had a light mortar section. Every infantry battalion or equivalent has medium (81mm or 80mm) mortar batteries with plenty of ammunition. And mortars can shoot all day long without wearing out a barrel.

Max Brooks had wild success off of tapping into that same middlebrow level that I was referring to above. It's a fun book. But he really didn't know anything about anything. That's why he wrote about zombies - people are into zombies and are about as discerning in quality as zombies themselves are as to what they eat.

And after they eat your brains you can't tell one thing from the other...

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

well lot of zombie survivors are common folk so you need some think simple to learn like I dont know automatic cross bow where average joe can reliably shoot and maintain his weapon so best weapon for average guy is from monster hunter called light bow gun. we have clip can hold at least 500 or more bolts to shoot before need to change cartridge. then we need reliable explosive bolts to turn zombies to gibs where they become harmless enough.
when we turn in to army guys we get the best weapon for zombie Apocalypse is unreal tournaments rocket launcher were we have both large loads and fast attacks in single package thus soldier can mov down the grass quick and effectively. so this is my best build options to survive on ground level zombie combat and good base to get bigger builds on. as how we can get both weapons ask Elon musk to prototype them over night then you are done.

Originally Posted by Dark Shadow

Threads are like cats. They go where they want, and never listen to what you want them to do.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by khadgar567

well lot of zombie survivors are common folk so you need some think simple to learn like I dont know automatic cross bow where average joe can reliably shoot and maintain his weapon so best weapon for average guy is from monster hunter called light bow gun. we have clip can hold at least 500 or more bolts to shoot before need to change cartridge. then we need reliable explosive bolts to turn zombies to gibs where they become harmless enough.
when we turn in to army guys we get the best weapon for zombie Apocalypse is unreal tournaments rocket launcher were we have both large loads and fast attacks in single package thus soldier can mov down the grass quick and effectively. so this is my best build options to survive on ground level zombie combat and good base to get bigger builds on. as how we can get both weapons ask Elon musk to prototype them over night then you are done.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

Nonesense. I've been hearing this kind of argument for decades. This is the reality.

Most films in the 60's or 70's were as bad as today, with different kinds of emphasis. But slight improvements in realism often paid dividends. Kirusawa Samurai films, Clint Eastwood / Sergeo Leoni Spaghetti Westerns were more realistic than the earlier John Wayne type.

John Wick was, if not realistic by any stretch, certainly making use of real fighting techniques. The whole thing was the creation of a fight coordinator.

Saving Private Ryan was a success based largely on the high level of realism of the first 5 minutes of the film.

Real medieval fencing for example is easily adaptable to modern fast cut editing. In fact it is if anything, too fast for most people to follow and you have to slow it down.

The truth is, most people have been conditioned to actually prefer mediocrity, some people are downright militant about it. It gives them something familiar which they feel they own.

But realistic fighting 'feels' right even to neophytes who know nothing about it. That's why you are seeing more jujitsu and less Peking Opera Wushu in fight scenes even in lame action movies.

There is a market for more realistic combat but few studio's would bother, because they are aiming low for the niche that they think will pay off. More often than not these days they guess wrong and fail. Hollywood has been losing a lot of money.

Agreed, while a lot of fight choreography in contemporary action movies is lamentably bad, in older ones it was almost universally so. Many of the "classic" war films can just about get away with it because they avoid anything at the personal scale beyond longer-range firefights, but the moment they get to hand to hand combat, they're always terrible.

Never mind that the dialogue in a lot of movies from before the 1970s was incredibly stilted and artifical-sounding, like they'd written for the stage and simply replicated it.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Honestly an AK47 sounds simpler. To use, to maintain, to make, to make ammo for and to get your hands on. It has less moving parts, requires less explosive substance and is more compact.

But since these are zombies just two people with handguns and enough ammo and either a group of folks with improvised pikes or just a good barbed wire barricade are probably going to be sufficient to clean out a small city. If you don't have any handguns (like me) you can try using bows or spears or slings or atlatls or throwing clubs or knives or screwdrivers or sharp pieces of scrap metal or cobbled together muskets or anything you can get your hands on, but if you're connected enough to have a well known science popularizer make prototypes for you I'm sure you can find some guns. They work fine.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Never mind that the dialogue in a lot of movies from before the 1970s was incredibly stilted and artifical-sounding, like they'd written for the stage and simply replicated it.

My older relatives swear that this is mostly truth-in-television.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

That's why he wrote about zombies - people are into zombies and are about as discerning in quality as zombies themselves are as to what they eat.

This much I'll dispute - I recall an interview where Brooks stated that he wrote about zombies because he finds them really, really frightening. I'm willing to believe that.

In general, the triumph of the book is that it looks at things through a political and logistical lens, and in spite of some flawed assumptions, does a good job of making the problem feel real in a way that crossbows and grizzled dudes with bats full of nails complaining about how life sucks can't. Part of that comes from looking at the concept through the lens of modern social problems - I recall in particular all of the stuff exploring how blood-borne diseases in general are surrounded by misinformation and myth, or the commentary on refugee crises, or the exploration of how countries that have been historically at odds often have better tools for deescalation than countries that ignore each other. Some of it comes from thinking about zombies outside of the standard suburban milieu, like the "oh god zombies in the water," bit, or how people end up fleeing to cold climes where the zombies will freeze. And at least some is the book's focus on the anatomy of an error, examining how militaries and governments overestimate their preparedness for the future while preparing for the past. But there are definitely problems; hell, the book includes a submarine battle, i.e. "that thing that has never happened." Brooks also tailors his subject to his style, making his zombies, for instance, possess a very different consistency than living humans, which allows him to draw certain conclusions that are otherwise implausible. He also makes some political guesses that I think are, at best, optimistic.

If we want to get truly "realistic," a classic zombie apocalypse is almost certainly impossible, simply because biting is not a very effective means of disease transmission. This is why rabies, well before we could treat it, was not a serious threat to human populations. It's hard to envision how the critical mass of zombies required could come about in the first place (and it's something Brooks works really, really hard to rationalize away).

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

My setting has a species of inteligent, pony sized flying hexapedal ambush carnivore (not obligate carnivore, they can have some non-meat) with tool use.

Not as large or as powerful as a classic dragon, and without a dragon's native ranged attack, they arnt overwelmingly powerful, but the danger of random balistic rocks out of the sky will likely affect armor, weapons, and tactics.

I need to know this before those inteligent tool using fliers start smithing their own weapons and armor.

I consider "Everything important is on the ground" to be a tactical consideration- while one of these drakes could drop rocks, the higher they are the less accurate, and they have to go back down to grab more rocks, (or lead darts, or shuriken, once smithing starts) which is tiring for an ambush predator. They are built for short burst sprinting (to get into the air) but their aerial sustained speed isnt actually that high- I'm provisionally pegging it as "slower than a fast horse" for tactical purposes. (and of course, the more they carry, the sooner they get tired.

On the flipside, though, they can ignore most rough terrain between them and the destination, as long as theirs room to get off the ground at the start and the terrain lets them land at the destination. (large woods are impassable unless you know a big burnscar, for instance.) This makes them really good at flanking and supply raiding, and even without rocks, having muscular wings offers a number of melee options capable of defeating unarmed humanoids, even if hollow bones mean the humanoids outmass them.

Wing damage heals slowly, but isnt an instant death sentance. Major wing damage, if it doesnt involve a bone-breaking fall to earth, cripples flight but leaves them perfectly capable on the ground.

What weapons and tech (low magic setting) would be developed prehistorically to hold off such a menace, before communication begins?

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Yora

Bow and arrow would be my first shot.

Elsewhere, I've gotten "broadhead hunting arrows fired just hard enough to get stuck halfway through the membrane and tear a little more every wingflap," "Horseback spears to deny a drake a place to land," and "Heavy infantry who outmass their waythrough bombardment and outlast the fleeing wounded/exausted."

Like, this isnt meant to be fair. It'll be fair once I give the drakes tech too.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

I realize that plenty of wounds that will take out a human won't take out a zombie, but the author gives that too much credit, claiming most of the artillery and gunship attacks are ineffective.

First, the effectiveness of artillery is greatly understated. Many, many shells are designed to be airbursting, which would invalidate all the muffling effects of the mob of zombies and result in lots and lots of head wounds from fragments. We also have munitions intended to start fires and Area Denial rounds which drop landmines, which could be deployed in front of the horde. These are bounding fragmentation mines which bounce up before exploding, so, again, plenty of head wounds. Even static mines would blow off legs, which would slow then further, and if the front zombie in a mindless horde is just pulling itself forward with its arms, it will probably be trampled to paste by the ones behind it. And the barrage could be started when the zombies were miles and miles away, to give plenty of time to adjust the defense if things weren't working right.

Airstrikes of napalm on a crowd of zombies would incinerate loads and loads of them, and the fires it would start would continue to serve as damage or area denial, depending on if they are smart enough to avoid fires.

Yes, they'd live longer on fire than a human, but only so long. Not sure how hot it has to be to cook a brain, but that should be as good as shooting one, and they won't have eyes for ears or noses after a minute on fire, so even if they keep walking, they'll be crippled.

Lastly, the idea of small arms fire reverting to Center of Mass, which we can all agree would be ineffective against a zombie.

You use Center of Mass because it's the best chance to hit what is usually a target that is moving fast and taking advantage of cover. If the enemy is moving slowly toward you, you have plenty of time to take careful aim. The current M16/M4 variants are very accurate and almost everybody has some kind of advanced optics today, so head shots at a slow moving guy at fifty or so yards is really not asking a lot.

Plus, much of the inaccuracy in combat is from nerves because you are usually being shot back at. If you aren't worried by the bullets snapping past your head, it will be much easier to take a moment to get a good sight picture. And a zombie at 50 or 100 or even 20 meters isn't a threat like the average enemy soldier is, so you can take a nice steady firing position and not sweat needing to hug the cover, make a nice slow rifle range trigger pull, and wait until the target is close enough to hit the head.

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.

Hey no worries i get the frustration 110%. .

Also way late on writing this :(.

My understanding of the current howie ammo, (i have read that btw in the past and skimmed it again for this), is that most modern ammo is impact detonating, though as i pointed out i discovered in research that contrary to my assumption and seemingly the authors cluster munitions are airbursting. Obviously getting airbursting HE rounds back into service should be as easy as grabbing sdoem from approriatte storage.

As for the napalm e.t.c. from some stuff passed on in the prior discussion fire only stopped them if it actually burned them up, heat didn't seem to do any damage. Yes it's not realistic, but neither is a creature moving aroudn without eating for days or requiring purely headshots to permanently kill.

For the center mass thing i was thinking more about muscle memory, my understanding is militaries like o get aiming and firing effectively down to as close to muscle memory as possible. I could see a lot of soldiers starting out alert picking their shots, but then quickly falling into a routine followed by their muscle memory kicking in without them even realising it. There's a reason "damn you muscle memory" has a trope entry on tvtropes. it;s somthing that really happens.

That said i'm fully willing to accept your criticisms of how the military handled things, i'm picking round the edges because history is full of to the point where it's almost the rule that no matter how much a military forces has heard about and thought about, if they run into somthing new they tend to make a whole long list of screwups. Add in all the possibility for economic, political, civil, and logistical screw ups, (which is my impression of the focus of the book and somthing gkathellar seems to agree on), before the military even fire their first shot and there's a lot of room for things to go tits up in an unexpected and problematic way. Maybe not to the degree or with the consequences of the book. But i would be downright amazed if there weren't plenty of cases of the military making a serious mistake, it's pretty much a military tradition for them to do so after this many thousands of years of beating each others skulls in with progressively more capable means. Sure it's a tradition i'd really like them to get out of the habit of, but i don't expect miracles.

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy

By most, yes.

By those who are fixated on Russian tanks, the "Armata" is "besttank".

My impression is the Armata has a lot of good idea's that may or may not be individually executed well, but i have doubts about the exact way they've been combined. On the other hand the idea of this stuff getting into others hands a tech generation or two down the line does worry me. It isn't going to be enough in typical quantities to really mess up a typical western military that gets into a war with such a country, but it could get mighty unpleasant for the people who have to actually fight said war, (not that i wouldn't rather they didn't have to fight the war at all of course).

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

Originally Posted by Rakaydos

Elsewhere, I've gotten "broadhead hunting arrows fired just hard enough to get stuck halfway through the membrane and tear a little more every wingflap," "Horseback spears to deny a drake a place to land," and "Heavy infantry who outmass their waythrough bombardment and outlast the fleeing wounded/exausted."

When you say 'prehistoric', do you mean Stone Age level? In which case atlatls, spears and low poundage bow stone head arrows would be the optimal (and probably only) defences.

There's a quite an indepth discussion several pages back on flying winged humanoids, both on equipment and tactics they would use and countermeasures against them.

Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

When you say 'prehistoric', do you mean Stone Age level? In which case atlatls, spears and low poundage bow stone head arrows would be the optimal (and probably only) defences.

There's also the possibility of slings. We're not really sure exactly how early they start showing up, largely because they're highly biodegradable (being some combination of leather, plant fiber, and animal fiber which varied quite a bit), but it's probably somewhere in the stone age.